Study: FPS deaths provide sweet relief to victims

How do gamers playing a first person shooter respond to being killed? …

The literature regarding the effect of violent gaming on a person's psyche is complex and often contradictory. Ultimately, many of the contradictions may result from differences in what's being measured and how those measurements are interpreted. These challenges are nicely illustrated by a paper in the most recent issue of the journal Emotion. The paper tracks the emotional responses of players of a first person shooter as they kill and get killed, but it leaves unanswered questions regarding what emotions those responses actually reflect.

The design of the study was pretty straightforward. A group of Finnish college students, lured with free movie tickets, were asked to play two games: the first person shooter James Bond 007: NightFire and the nonviolent Super Monkey Ball 2. While playing, skin conductance levels were monitored to track emotional arousal, while specific emotions were measured by electrodes that followed the activities of facial muscles. The students were also given a test (the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire) that determined psychotic tendencies. According to the authors, those who get high scores on the test are, "impulsive, sadistic, hostile, aggressive, unemotional, and lacking in empathy." They also tend to find media portrayals of violence amusing, rather than disturbing.

When playing James Bond, both killing and being killed consistently triggered emotional responses. The big surprise came in the measurements of facial muscles: "instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent elicited anxiety, anger, or both." In contrast, the subjects appeared to respond positively to being killed. This contrasts sharply with Super Monkey Ball, where events associated with gaming success caused a positive response.

One obvious interpretation of these results is a difference in game mechanics. Success, in terms of a kill in a first person shooter, often leaves the player with the tension of identifying the next threat in the game. Death, in contrast, relieves them of this concern, an aspect of gaming the authors themselves noted. In many nonviolent games, achievements and threats are not directly linked.

In this study, the test of psychotic tendencies argues against these mechanical differences accounting for the distinct reactions. Those who scored higher tended to have a more neutral emotional response to a successful kill. Of course, it's also possible to interpret this as indicating that psychotic individuals have a dulled response to future threats.

Fitting the results into the broader question of the link between violent games and violent behavior is even more complex. The authors actually note two potentially positive aspects of this study. For one, there was no drop in the emotional response to death events over time, suggesting that there's not a general desensitization to violence during violent gaming. They also state that "the fact that wounding or killing the opponent elicited negative, not positive, emotional responses might be reassuring." In contrast, they admit to having absolutely no idea of what the broader meaning of gamers finding death a relief might be.